Books, Brian Donaldson

Ali Smith - The First Person and Other Stories

2 Oct 2008

SHORT STORIES In this, her fourth collection of short stories, Ali Smith sets out her philosophical stall as quickly as she can. Her opening tale, ‘True Short Story’, ponders the very nature of the form itself as two men debate the merits of the…

Kid loves - Children's books round-up

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

Harry Potter may have played his last game of Quidditch and Lemony Snicket’s series of events have unfortunately ceased to be, but there are still plenty of iconic figures hanging around in children’s literature. Brian Donaldson finds ten of them…

In England - interview with Don McCullin

1 Nov 2007

Don McCullin might seem like some kind of anachronistic beast among the top photographers today. Not for him the simpering vanities of celebrityhood; he has always been far more interested in the real problems that face ordinary people on a daily basis.

David Thewlis

6 Sep 2007

BLACK COMEDY When Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker came up with Nathan Barley on Channel 4 a couple of years back, many people were perturbed that its main sticking point was in poking fun at a group who seemed no longer ripe for satire. Surely…

Harry Hill - Tim the Tiny Horse at Large

18 Sep 2008

KIDS STORY You can virtually smell Harry Hill at his keyboard, big collar tickling his neck, tongue flicking in and out (‘hmm, hmm, yeah, hmm?’), eyes blinking maniacally as the ideas bristle through his cranium. There is a chance, of course, that he…

Kids Events

14 Aug 2008

When Miranda Richardson so memorably played the child-like Queen Elizabeth I in Blackadder, a career in entertaining kids seemed to be in the offing. With Horrid Henry (16 Aug) she appears to have finally grasped that opportunity by voicing the little…

Kids' events

23 Aug 2007

The last few days of the kids programme takes a walk on the dark side with scary-sounding events such as Night of the Living Horror (25 Aug, 6pm) which opens up a world of gothic terror for those aged ten plus, though Justin Somper and his Vampirates…

Daren King

Mouse Noses on Toast (Faber)

1 Sep 2006

CHILDREN’S TALE The number of authors who shift from adult to kids fiction per year probably matches the annual rumour count about who will be killed off in the next Harry Potter. The news that Daren King was to make the shift was less of a shock…

Also released - 5 Poetry Books

13 Nov 2008

● Vera Brittain Because You Died A collection of poems and prose from the author of Testament of Youth, all about the men she loved who perished in the First World War. Virago . ● Dennis O’Donnell Stepping Stones This one features interviews with…

Hitlist-Books

13 Nov 2008

● Alastair Campbell New Labour’s arch doctor of spin tackles matters concerning real health with his debut novel, All in the Mind, based on his own mental breakdown back in the 1980s. Waterstone’s, Glasgow, Wed 19 Nov. ● Alexei Sayle In the not too…

Also Published - 5 Sports Paperbacks

24 Apr 2008

Barry Davies - Interesting, Very Interesting Over 40 years of broadcast commentating are recalled here by a man who reached the peaks when he went on Big Train to cover the World Stare Out Championships. Headline . Eddie Jordan – An Independent Man…

Derren Brown - Tricks of the Mind

Derren Brown

7 Dec 2006

BIOGRAPHY/MANUAL What’s the first rule among magicians? Surely it’s the one about never ever divulging the secrets of your chosen profession. So, what on earth is Derren Brown doing here telling the humble general public how to develop useful…

Patti Smith - Auguries of Innocent

Patti Smith

7 Dec 2006

POETRY In the recent Punk Night documentary on ITV4, John Lydon was being characteristically, boringly dismissive of the New York acts (Ramones, Television, Patti Smith) who arrived as the British wave exploded. They were just too educated, too…

Noam Chomsky - The Essential Chomsky

13 Nov 2008

(Bodley Head) For over 40 years, ‘the world’s greatest public intellectual’ has been not so much a thorn in the side of the West’s establishment structures as a battering ram to everything held dear by liberals and conservatives alike. Now fast…

Jim Holt - Stop Me If You've Heard This

30 Oct 2008

If there is one art form often deemed to be beyond analysis, it's comedy. You hear, see or read something funny and then you laugh. End of. Right? Anyone who seeks to go beneath the skin of stand-up and explain the mechanics only succeeds in killing the…

Andrew Anthony - The Fallout

16 Oct 2008

SOCIAL MEMOIR In 2001, Andrew Anthony was just another member of the liberal-left intelligentsia, dutifully filing his anti-conservative copy to The Observer and Guardian. Then a pair of planes swung into the World Trade Center and the belief systems…

Top 5 - TV People

14 Aug 2008

Susie Dent Don’t even ask her to be drawn on the subject of the ‘Carol Countdown Controversy’. Along with fellow word fan Henry Hitchings, the nine-letter word expert will be talking about the ever-evolving English language. 20 Aug, 2pm, £9 (£7).

Alistair Findlay (ED) - 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems

29 Nov 2007

POETRY 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems (Luath) When it comes to transferring the beautiful game into the arts sphere, all we can see is a litany of own goals. Can you remember a half-decent football film? No, Escape to Victory doesn’t count…

Stewart/Wiseman/Brigg

Cathy’s Book (Bloomsbury)

26 Feb 2007

TEEN DRAMA It’s not enough to just write a book these days, it would seem. With this quirky little multimedia project, a melange of peripheral paraphernalia is wielded to keep our involvement levels unusually high in this identity saga/crime mystery…

Michael Bond - Paddington Here and Now

22 May 2008

KIDS COLLECTION (HarperCollins) When a book series returns from a long absence to mark its main character’s anniversary, it can often feel too much like a rushed job created purely to ensure that the keynote guest isn’t late for their own party.

Lucie Whitehouse - The House at Midnight

4 Jan 2008

MYSTERY DRAMA (Bloomsbury) Employing a strategy inherently demanding that there’s no good reason to use one paragraph to describe paintings about Greek gods when an entire page-and-a-half will do, Lucie Whitehouse’s debut ultimately borders on the…

Will Hutton

9 Aug 2007

It’s not many people that can make dense economic theory and political machinations accessible to the casual reader, but Will Hutton is one such man. Formerly the editor-in-chief of the Observer and What the Papers Say political journalist of the year…

The Last Breath

Denise Mina

1 Aug 2007

Bookended by two brutal slayings, this third novel in the Paddy Meehan series does everything possible to suggest that Denise Mina remains one of Scotland’s finest crime writers.

David Lynch

Wild at art

23 Apr 2007

At the Paris launch of David Lynch’s first major exhibition of his drawings and photographs, the 61-year-old director was asked to offer some insight into the work. To seasoned Lynch-watchers, the response was a typical mixture of beguiling and…

Apples

Richard Milward

9 Apr 2007

TEENAGE DRAMA The confused and lusty youthdom of Britain are everywhere at the moment from the seemingly daily scare stories on the tabloid front pages and broadsheet opinion columns to the hedonistic revelry of Skins. On literature’s side, January’s…

Charlie Fletcher - Stoneheart

Charlie Fletcher

11 Nov 2006

BOOK PREVIEW Inanimate objects coming to life is a staple of kids and fantasy literature. And advertising too, if you can picture a car breaking down into its components and strolling around like a very tall human. In Charlie Fletcher’s children’s…

Cosmo Landesman - Starstruck

16 Oct 2008

SHOWBIZ MEMOIR Fran and Jay Landesman sound like a tough set of parents. She a poet and jazz singer, he a producer and comedian. Together they fled the US due to a perceived lack of success, viewing Swinging 60s London as a kinder, less competitive…

Neil Astley & Pamela Robertson-Pearce - In Person: 30 Poets

22 May 2008

POETRY DVD/BOOK (Bloodaxe) Tucked inside the book of the same name comes a smart pair of DVDs which platform the depth and range which poetry publisher Bloodaxe have been offering us for three decades. In Person is a celebration of the intimacy that…

5 Debut Novels

10 Apr 2008

Héddi Kaddour - Waltenberg A bumper espionage thriller between World War I and the Berlin Wall’s collapse featuring a German author, an American singer and a French journalist. Harvill Secker . Jane Kotapish - Salvage Narrated by a woman who has…

Also Published - 5 Diet Books

4 Jan 2008

Theresa Cheung - The Lemon Juice Diet It’s the big ingredient in the Hollywood slimmer’s scran these days, replacing the various recent dieting fads of coconut, pineapple and cabbage soup. Vermillion . Marisa Peer - You Can Be Thin This one is aimed…

Paul Barker

18 Oct 2007

FAMILY GUIDE The Book of Dad (Fourth Estate) According to Paul Barker, Journalist Dad lives on pork scratchings and cigarettes, drives a second hand Saab and dreams of hanging out with Hollywood’s finest at the Dorchester Hotel while actually…

Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror

Chris Priestly

20 Sep 2007

With a title like that and these spooky stories being told to a boy called Edgar, it’s hard not to think that this is a tribute to the creator of literary chillers, Mr Poe. And while reading this, it’s highly conceivable to hear the liquidy tones of…

Virgins

Anke Bernau

20 Sep 2007

In these enlightened days, discussions about virginity are spread freely across many areas of life from the school playgrounds of the world to the policy departments of the Republican Party. But it wasn’t always this way. In this lively book from Anke…

Norman Mailer

The Castle in the Forest (Little, Brown)

12 Feb 2007

HISTORICAL FICTION No one should deny Norman Mailer’s right to create novels about whatever the hell he wants. Much gnashing of teeth has already occurred in Germany over an octogenarian alpha male from Massachusetts writing about the darkest days of…

Niven Govinden

Graffiti My Soul (Canongate)

12 Jan 2007

SOCIAL DRAMA When a book claims that in its setting that ‘nothing bad ever happens’, you can rest assured that many different variants of excrement will be hitting the fan. With Niven Govinden’s zingy second novel, the disaffected youth of Surrey are…

Andy Riley - Loads More Lies to Tell Small Kids

Andy Riley

18 Sep 2006

COMIC ILLUSTRATIONS I suppose anyone who has worked closely with Armando Iannucci, Dylan Moran and Dom Joly must have a naturally devilish streak in them. But only the most brutally callous would imagine a bloodbath involving the Tweenies, have a…

Top 5 - Tories

21 Aug 2008

Rick Wakeman He might be a cast member of the Grumpy Old Men but simply mention the word ‘conservative’ and the Yes man lights up. He even performed a gig in 2004 to raise funds for the party. Rock’n’roll eh? 22 Aug, 6.30pm, £9 (£7) . Ffion Hague…

Richard Mason

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

In some forms of entertainment fame can often come extraordinarily early (music and film perhaps), but with mechanisms in place to help the ‘victims’ deal with the onset of celebrity. In the literary world, support systems are less common, especially…

Simon Critchley - The Book of Dead Philosophers

5 Jun 2008

PHILOSOPHER HISTORY (Granta) Alongside religious types, the permanently unhealthy and stand-up comedians, philosophers have a nightly battle with questions about the process of dying and the actual reality of having snuffed it. Naturally, none of them…

Also Published - 5 Travel Books

8 May 2008

Daniel Kalder - Strange Telescopes Following up his Lost Cosmonaut, this intrepid Fifer goes on the hunt for some more offbeat individuals in the former Soviet Union. Faber . Susanna Clark - A House in Fez Subtitled ‘Building a Life in the Ancient…

Joe Humphreys - Foul Play

10 Apr 2008

SPORT HISTORY (Icon Books) With the protests surrounding the Beijing Olympics going into overdrive, disgraced sprinter Dwain Chambers seeking a new career in rugby league and the integrity of referees, umpires and line judges being called into…

Gordon Burn - Born Yesterday

27 Mar 2008

NOVELISED HISTORY (Faber) Having dabbled in the world of real life Manchester United legends in Best and Edwards and fictionalised the stories of semi-real boxers and comedians for The North England Home Service, Gordon Burn’s latest, the ‘News as a…

Also Published - 5 Unit Shifters

17 Jan 2008

Cathy Kelly - Lessons in Heartbreak Izzie has broken her own rules about having affairs with married men while her ageing aunt has just discovered her husband’s infidelity. HarperCollins . Monty Don - Around the World in 80 Gardens The presenter…

Mike Dash - Satan’s Circus

17 Jan 2008

TRUE CRIME (Granta) ‘Nearly five million men and women have served the United States as police officers. Only one has been executed for murder.’ There is little doubt that Charles Becker was more than just a bad apple, in an early 20th century New…

Dave Evans - Coolhunting

4 Jan 2008

CULT DESIGN Current adverts for DVD box sets of flashy dross such as The OC and Friends claim that these shows are ‘funny, sexy, cool’. But what, then, does it mean to be cool? The definitions have certainly changed down the years with archetypal…

Preview 2008 - Books

4 Jan 2008

So, surely this year will mark a big new beginning when proper literature, you know, actual novels, replaces the ridiculously self-serving and endless charade that is the celebrity autobiography? Nah, not really. 2008 will witness little in the way of a…

Also Published - 5 US Crime Dramas

29 Nov 2007

Otto Penzler (ed) Dead Man’s Hand A collection of newly written poker-based tales from crime writers such as Jeffrey Deaver, Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley. Quercus. James Lee Burke The Tin Roof Blowdown A cache of stolen diamonds has floated…

Charlie Brooker

15 Nov 2007

COLLECTED JOURNALISM Dawn of the Dumb (Faber) Listening to a verbose man rant on and on about the things that irritate him can be a relentless and exhausting chore at times. Put that down in print and those same demented opinions can appear more…

Reuters

15 Nov 2007

SPORT PHOTOGRAPHY Sport in the 21st Century (Thames & Hudson) Alongside the wilds of earthly nature and mysteries of the solar system, sporting endeavour and its surrounding dramas could have been created simply to be caught on camera. In this…

Also Published - 5 Unit Shifters

18 Oct 2007

• Jackie Collins Drop Dead Beautiful A psycho on the internet stalks Lucky Santangelo after she opens a flashy hotel complex in Las Vegas. Simon & Schuster. • Patricia Cornwell Book of the Dead Kay Scarpetta opens a private forensic pathology…

Hitlist - The best books, comics & events

18 Oct 2007

• Gail Porter The Edinburgh-born media star drops by for a book signing as she unveils her autobiography, Laid Bare, which chronicles the many psychological and physical battles she’s endured over the last decade. Waterstone’s, Edinburgh, Thu 25…

Also Published - 5 Travel Paperbacks

6 Sep 2007

• Robert Carver - Paradise with Serpents The author follows in the footsteps of his great uncle as he finds adventure and intrigue in the lost world of Paraguay. Perennial. • Felipe Fernandez-Armesto - Pathfinders This one is a 'history of…

John Pilger

23 Aug 2007

In this day and age, journalist is a job title which is afforded a disdain from the general public on a par with estate agent, parking attendant and serial killer. Trust is a commodity that is lacking when it comes to relations between newspaper people…

A History of Modern Britain

21 May 2007

SOCIAL HISTORY The cynical and lazy may wonder what would be the point of purchasing 600 pages by Andrew Marr telling us about the development of Britain since 1945 when his simultaneous TV documentary series will do the same thing. But with more…

Falling Man

7 May 2007

HISTORICAL DRAMA

Death of a Murderer

Rupert Thomson

26 Mar 2007

FAMILY DRAMA With artworks, dramas and songs having been created about and around Myra Hindley, there is no particular reason for Rupert Thomson’s eighth novel to be inherently offensive. What genuinely upsets here is the paucity of much of the…

Dan Rhodes

Gold (Canongate)

12 Mar 2007

COMIC NOVEL Were the cast of Last of the Summer Wine a little more off-kilter and if Nora Batty was a bit less of a lumpy-stockinged battleaxe with an eye for mindless trivia, they could have easily come to mind when reading Dan Rhodes’ pleasing and…

Toni Davidson

Eight years on from the publication of Scar Cultur

12 Feb 2007

So, what’s in a name? Quite a lot as far as Toni Davidson is concerned. The author of 1999’s cult classic Scar Culture wants you to have his characters ingrained on your memory. And if giving them a title which will leap out at you from the relative…

Molly McGrann

Exurbia (Picador)

29 Jan 2007

TEEN DRAMA The 80s may have been the decade that taste forgot (unless you reckon that was the 70s or 90s), but it’s been wildly in vogue for writers looking to pick on an even meaner, reckless period than the one we are currently dragging ourselves…

Daljit Nagra

Look We Have Coming to Dover! (Faber)

12 Jan 2007

POETRY COLLECTION Daljit Nagra’s parents moved from the Punjab to Britain in the 1950s and it’s no real surprise that his poetry should be knitted together from bits of his cultural heritage and present environment. So, in the opener ‘Darling & Me!…

Ryan Knighton

Cockeyed (Atlantic)

19 Dec 2006

MEMOIR Maybe it has ever been thus, but the cult of an individual neither you nor I have ever heard of telling us all about their unfortunate life seems to be spreading. We may wish to blame Frank McCourt for it all, but the misery market is flooded…

Courtney Love

Dirty Blonde (Picador)

11 Nov 2006

CELEBRITY DIARIES When documentary-maker Jacques Peretti began a project about the final days of Kurt Cobain, his approach to Courtney Love was met with a firm rejection: ‘I don’t want to do the rock widow thang anymore.’ But, like or not, and as…

Roddy Doyle

Paula Spencer (Jonathan Cape)

12 Oct 2006

SOCIAL DRAMA Epic historical trilogies must be a hell of a grind. So, you can forgive Roddy Doyle for taking his eye temporarily off the ball of his Last Roundup series (two down: A Star Called Henry and Oh, Play that Thing, one to come in, probably…

Lynne Cox

The Day the Whale Came (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

2 Oct 2006

NATURE TALE One early passage in this book from the author of Swimming to Antarctica reveals just how dangerous a stingray can be. ‘When the barb is injected into the foot, it locks into the skin and the only way to extricate it is to have it…

An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore (Bloomsbury)

4 Sep 2006

It would have been so easy for Al Gore to have become a horribly embittered individual after being cheated out of the US presidency in 2000. No one would have faulted him for spending the rest of his life sticking pins into effigies of Florida governor…

Al Gore

An Inconvenient Truth (Bloomsbury)

1 Sep 2006

SOCIAL ESSAY It would have been so easy for Al Gore to have become a horribly embittered individual after being cheated out of the US presidency in 2000. No one would have faulted him for spending the rest of his life sticking pins into effigies of…

Gordon Burn

Upsetting the traditionalists with novelised news

21 Aug 2008

‘I hate plots. Soon as I know that a film or a book or TV show has a plot, my brain can’t cope with it. If I’m watching a film and I don’t know or have forgotten what the storyline is and I’m supposed to work out who this or that person is, I just fall…

Kids' Events

Trains and tweens dominate the first week

7 Aug 2008

Trains and tweens dominate the first week The good, the naughty and the hungry are all in evidence in the opening salvo of the kids programme, with the whole shebang kicked off in boisterous style by queen of tween Cathy Cassidy (9 Aug) who presents…

5 Travel Books

17 Jul 2008

Ellie Nielsen Our Own Piece of Paris Subtitled ‘How We Fell in Love with the City of Light’, this follows one woman’s quest to find an apartment that oozes Parisian chic. Atlantic. Kapka Kassabova Street Without a Name Subtitled ‘Childhood and Other…

5 Paperback Autobiogs

Also Published

27 Mar 2008

David Coulthard - It Is What It Is From rural Scotland to a multi-millionaire lifestyle in Monte Carlo all thanks to the flashy world of Formula 1 motor racing. Orion . Mark Barrowcliffe - The Elfish Gene A memoir of a nerdish youth in the 1970s…

Susan Faludi - The Terror Dream

13 Mar 2008

MODERN HISTORY (Atlantic) Susan Faludi has gained a fearsome reputation for her analysis of gender politics, the state of America and political horseplay. And after making her name with Backlash and Stiffed, she has now chucked all three into one…

Also Published - 5 Unit Shifters

28 Feb 2008

Jeffrey Archer - A Prisoner of Birth He just can’t get free of that prison cell, can he? Belmarsh is the setting for a revenge drama where an innocent man has been sent down at HM’s pleasure. Macmillan . Louis de Bernières - A Partisan’s Daughter A…

Also Published - 5 Paperback debut novels

14 Feb 2008

Priya Basil - Ishq and Mushq A generational novel about a Sikh mother whose secret past corrodes her life with tragic consequences for all. Black Swan . Catherine Hanrahan - Lost Girls and Love Hotels By day Margaret is training to be an air…

Robin Ramsay - Who Shot JFK?

29 Nov 2007

TRUE CRIME Who Shot JFK? (Pocket Essentials) Early on in this pacy dissection of the current state of the JFK assassination industry, Robin Ramsay asks why we should still be bothered about the slaying of an American president in downtown Dallas…

Adapt or die - from page to screen

1 Nov 2007

THE BEST The Godfather Mario Puzo had three novels under his belt before he penned the tale of Don Vito Corleone and his Family/family in 1969 which was immortalised in movie form by Francis Ford Coppola three years later. One bit of advice: if an…

Don Paterson - The Blind Eye

Comic aphorisms

4 Oct 2007

The Blind Eye is another delightful rendering of Dundee Don Paterson’s graceful ability to shift between the high brow and the pop cult with Game Boys and The Simpsons rubbing shoulders up against Orpheus and Auden. Never dull, often flighty, Paterson…

Ewan Morrison

23 Aug 2007

For any writer who spends most of their time away all on their own in a darkened corner, it’s essential to have a release and to get some thoughts on their work from people they know and trust. For an author such as Ewan Morrison, dubbed notoriously as…

Also Published - 5 Food Books

9 Aug 2007

Sid Owen - Life on a Plate Ricky from EastEnders shows off yet another of his many talents with this tome, subtitled ‘The Journey of an Unexpected Chef’. I’ll say. Century . John Dickie! - Delizia The author of Cosa Nostra brings us a book which…

Kids Events

9 Aug 2007

When you say ‘comic’ to a kid they might think of the Beano or Roy of the Rovers (if you’re a kid over 35) but the event with Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy will open up the eyes of teenagers and any young at heart adults in tow. Graphic novels are something…

Top 5 - Fiction Finales

9 Aug 2007

With rumours that the next Inspector Rebus adventure may be the very last one, we look at books which waved a fond farewell to some legendary creations Jeeves & Wooster In 1974, PG Wodehouse gave us Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen (a title which requires…

My Story: From the Eye of the Hurricane

18 Jun 2007

SPORT MEMOIR I wonder if Headline won the race to secure the life story of Alex Higgins as this rebel with a cue was rarely away from them in the papers. Never one for the modest approach, Higgins’ assertion that he changed the game of snooker…

God is Not Great

18 Jun 2007

SPIRITUAL DEBATE (Photo: © Christian Witkin) Christopher Hitchens is not a man to shy away from a difficult situation. On stage in Hay a couple of years back, he confronted his right-wing press pack brother Peter after a détente in which they…

Bad Men

Clive Stafford Smith

23 Apr 2007

POLITICAL ESSAY Clive Stafford Smith has been privy to some horrible maltreatments of human beings down the years. As a Cornishman with dual UK/US citizenship, he is seen as a saviour to the many Death Row prisoners he has tried to rescue from lethal…

Laura & June Hird

Dear Laura (Canongate)

26 Feb 2007

COLLECTED LETTERS Not a writer who has been known for her schmaltz, Laura Hird might have shaken up a few of her fans for a second when they heard that a book of letters penned by June, her late mum, was the next publication after last year’s raw…

Aye Write!

Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Fri 16-Sun 25 Feb

12 Feb 2007

BOOK FESTIVAL At times, it might seem like the world of children’s writing is a woman’s domain. You can barely move in the kids section of a book store without bumping into a whole shelf dedicated to JK Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine or Lauren…

Will Hutton

The Writing on the Wall (Little, Brown)

12 Jan 2007

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS Taking complicated economic arguments and turning them into coherent and accessible reading is no mean task. But Will Hutton has long been a master of making the difficult easier to digest. His previous books have looked at…

Books of the Year

Books editor Brian Donaldson selects his favourite

7 Dec 2006

Alan Warner The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven One of his less ‘difficult’ books, the Oban-born, Dublin-based writer’s return was a metaphysical lurch into desperation with a Spanish protagonist living in the shadow of HIV. A typical gallery of Warnerian…

Editors of Life, The

The Editors of Life

27 Nov 2006

PHOTOJOURNALISM A picture, as the hoary old cliché runs, paints a thousand words. If that’s the case, then there may not be enough of them in all the languages of the world to cover the stories featured in LIFE magazine down the years. Created in…

Thomas Pynchon

Silent witness

27 Nov 2006

T is for Tinasky Wanda Tinasky was a bag lady living under a bridge in Northern California who wrote witty correspondence to a local paper during the 1980s. Rumour was rife that Thomas Pynchon was behind the letters, but more prominence has been given…

Comedy books for Christmas

Brian Donaldson nominates some top titles

23 Nov 2006

Norma Farnes Box 18: The Unpublished Spike Milligan (HarperCollins) Named after the file into which the Goon would stick his ideas, this loving biog comes from his long-suffering agent.

Jon Ronson

Out of the Ordinary (Picador)

21 Nov 2006

COLLECTED JOURNALISM Throughout much of his journalistic career, Jon Ronson has played a bit part in his stories, occasionally stumbling about in the background while his subjects (fascists, fundamentalists and felons mainly), hang themselves on…

Agatha Christie

Ripping yarns

12 Oct 2006

When The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published 80 years ago, the leftfield plot twist and unreliable narrator left her readers and the wider crime fiction community feeling betrayed. Only the tie-breaking vote of Dorothy Sayers prevented her from being…

Dominic Streatfeild

Brainwash (Hodder & Stoughton)

2 Oct 2006

POLITICAL HISTORY From the man who brought us Cocaine comes the richly detailed story of mind control, the full unexpurgated past of truth drugs, hypnosis, Pavlovian experiments and sleep deprivation. Everything from the Moscow Show Trials to…

Gordon Burn - Best and Edwards

Gordon Burn

18 Sep 2006

SPORT BIOGRAPHY On the day of the recent Champions League clash between Manchester United and Celtic, the shirt George Best wore while scoring six goals for the Red Devils against Northampton in 1970 was sold in auction for £24,000. It feels…

Michael Faber

Michel Faber

1 Sep 2006

SHORT STORIES Often, the image of an author is someone beavering away in the privacy of their own soul not caring a jot for anyone other than the characters and their own measuring of success. So, it’s almost reassuring to hear when a writer has not…

Andrew Motion

14 Aug 2006

The post of Poet Laureate is one which tends to putter away in the background of most people’s lives even though legendary figures such as John Betjeman and Lord Tennyson have been bestowed with that title. Current PL, Andrew Motion, succeeded in…